Story: Laws About the
Sabbath and Festivals
Passage: Exodus 23:10-19
Characters: God,
Israel
Summary: God gave
Moses a set of laws about the Sabbath and feasts. These will be outlined in the notes below.
Notes: I don’t have
as much as I want on this one right now.
I might have to add to it later if I think of more. The first rule God gave Israel in this passage
is the Sabbath year. Every seventh year,
they were to not sow or reap. The fields
were to grow whatever would grow naturally and the food would be for the poor
and the beasts. Basically, every seventh
year, there was more food for the poor than those with fields. God again sets the rule of resting on the Sabbath. The purpose was that on the seventh day,
servants, animals, and aliens would be refreshed. This concept of rest is foreign to our
western culture. We go go go until the job
is done. If we’re resting we’re not
being productive and thus we are failing.
God seems to promote a lifestyle of hard work at a slow pace. It is okay and even necessary to rest every
week. Yes, you had to work hard to
survive, but you also had to allow yourself to rest. We may not work on Sunday in America, but we
sure tend to fill our weekends up with activities which keep our weekends from
being restful. The idea is not so much
to not work as it is to rest and relax and be refreshed. God tells them to pay attention to Him and to
not even mention other gods. It wasn’t enough
to not worship them; He didn’t even want them discussed. That is how much He is jealous for the
worship He deserves. There were three
feasts God mentioned in this passage.
The first is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We already have learned about this one. This was to commemorate their deliverance
from their bondage in Egypt and ultimately, it was also foreshadowing our
deliverance from the bondage of sin. The
next feast is the Feast of the Harvest.
This was to be a feast of the first fruits of the harvest. The final feast is the Feast of Ingathering. This was at the end of the harvest. I believe that these also have significance in
the New Covenant as well. Most feasts in
the law were foreshadowing something in the future. The harvest is compared to a lot of things
throughout scripture. Sharing the gospel
is compared to sowing seed. There is a
sense of you reaping what you sow when it comes to your actions. The most significant and applicable passage I
can think of though is Matthew 9:37, “"The
harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” People’s souls are the harvest. The Feast of the Harvest could well be
foreshadowing this future harvest of souls and the Feast of Ingathering could
be foreshadowing the end of this harvest.
I need to do a little more research on those feasts, but those are my initial
thoughts. God finishes by commanding
that nothing leavened is to be included with His sacrifice. The fat of the feast was not to be left until
morning. There is a sense that
sacrifices are to be special and set apart
and there is also a sense of urgency about them. Sacrifices are to be from the best of the
first fruits. It is significant when you
give the best and first of the results of your hard work to God. It shows humility and shows an awareness that
though work was put into this harvest, it is God, and not our own work which
caused this harvest. A goat shall not be
boiled in its mother’s milk. I don’t
know the point of this law, but I will add to this later if I think of it.
Questions: Why the
goat law? What is the New Covenant
significance of the Feast of the Harvest and the Feast of Ingathering?
Lessons: I think we
as a culture need to learn to rest. It
seems completely contrary to productivity.
Our culture looks at rest as waste.
This is obviously not how God viewed rest though. I know for me, rest can help my work be more
productive. It was important to God that
His people not be caught up with work.
If they became so busy they forgot God, that would be an issue. I feel like many Christians in the West today
have this very issue. We need to make a
definite effort to slow down and allow ourselves a regular period of rest.
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